And Paul, as he walked on, felt that the silence intensified his clear pleasure and clearer pain. For there was no vagueness in _his_ emotions. It was not the first time that the touch of a woman's hand had thrilled him through and through, as Marjory's had done as they looked out over the sunset sea; but it was the first time that such a thrill had not moved him to look upon the woman's face! And they had stood still, hand in hand, like a couple of children, staring at the Green Ray! What a fool he had been! What did it mean save something at which he had always scoffed, at which he meant always to scoff! And then the Green Ray? Was his brain softening that he should see visions and dream dreams? He, Paul Macleod, who loved and forgot all, save his own physical comfort. As everyone did in the end. And yet it was a familiar pleasure to be in love again honestly, a pleasure to feel his heart beating, to know that the girl he fancied was there beside him in the moonlight, that he could tell her of his heart-beats if he chose. But he did not choose. Love of that sort came and went! Did he not know it? Did he not know his own nature, and was not that enough? And yet, when they reached the high road a sudden desire to make her also understand it, made him say, abruptly: "When do you begin work? In London, isn't it?" "Yes; in November." "And you are really going to waste life in a dull, dirty school, teaching vulgar little boys and girls." "I shall teach them not to be vulgar." He shrugged his shoulders. "You cannot fight against Nature, Miss Carmichael; as we are born, we remain. You will only kill yourself in your efforts at regeneration." "I think not. I am very strong to begin with, and then I hate rusting in idleness." "Rust may be better than tarnish. When I think of you here in this paradise--a fool's paradise, perhaps--and of what you must encounter there, it seems preposterous for you to mix yourself up. But you do not understand; you never will." He had forgotten his new outlook in the old resentment at her unconsciousness. "Understand what? I can understand most things if I try." "Can you? I doubt it. You cannot understand me, for instance, but that is beside the question. The only comfort is that real life will disgust you. Then you will return to the home you should never have left." "I have no home--you know that." "You can make one by marrying, as other girls do." "I am not like other girls, thank you----" "Do you think I can't see that?" he broke out quite passionately. "Should I be talking to you as I am if you were--why, I can't even speak to you of what some of them are. It is because you are not as other girls----" "Then you wish me to behave as they do. You are scarcely logical." Her tone was as ice, and, chilling his passion, sent him back to his cynicism.